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Notes
The laureates were Daron Acemoglu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA), Simon Johnson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA) and James A. Robinson (University of Chicago, IL, USA) “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity”, The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, 14 October 2024, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/press-release/, consulted 8 July 2025.
Rachel Reeves, The 2024 Mais Lecture, Baynes Business School, 19 March 2024, https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/rachel-reeves-mais-lecture/, consulted 8 July 2025.
Interview with Faisal Islam, ITV, 3 June 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGgiGtJk7MA, consulted 8 July 2025. Questioning the authority and the credibility of experts from independent institutions led to a schism, as Paul Tucker, himself a former Bank of England official, puts it, between “hyper-depoliticised technocracy and hyper-politicised populism, each fueling the other in attempts, respectively, to maintain effective government and to reestablish majoritarian sensibility”, Paul Tucker, Unelected Power: The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2018), p. 2.
Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen, Beyond continuity – Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 9.
Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 3-5.
Ibid., pp. 94-95.
“Broadly speaking, political rules in place lead to economic rules, though the causality runs both ways”, ibid.
Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics”, The American Political Science Review, 94:2, June 2000, pp. 257-262.
Ibid., p. 262.
Vivien Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse”, Annual Review of Political Science, 11, June 2008, pp 303-326.
Ibid., p. 305.
Vivien Schmidt, “Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously: Explaining Change Through Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth ‘New Institutionalism’”, European Political Science Review, 2:1, March 2010, p. 23.
Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, “Power in International Politics”, International Organisation, 59:1 Winter 2005, p. 51. Power is viewed here in its broadest sense as a means of controlling the political agenda and securing compliance without triggering grievances, as domination has come to be seen as legitimate via institutional procedures and rituals which shape the “rules of the game”. See also Steven Lukes, Power – A Radical View (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), p. 30.
Martin B. Carstensen and Vivien A. Schmidt, “Power through, over and in Ideas: Conceptualizing Ideational Power in Discursive Institutionalism”, Journal of European Public Policy, 23:3, 2016, pp. 318-337.
Ibid., p. 328.
In 2013, the UK moved from to a “twin-peak” model of financial regulation with the Bank of England housing two new regulatory bodies (Financial Services Act 2013, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2013/33/contents, consulted 8 July 2025)
Andy Haldane, “A Little More Conversation, A Little Less Action”, Speech given at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Macroeconomic and Monetary Policy Conference, 31 March 2017, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2017/a-little-more-conversation-a-little-less-action, consulted 8 July 2025.
David Cameron, “EU referendum outcome: PM statement”, Prime Minister’s Office, 24 June 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-referendum-outcome-pm-statement-24-june-2016, consulted 8 July 2025.
Katie Allen, Jill Treanor and Simon Goodley, “Pound slumps to 31-low following Brexit vote”, The Guardian, 24 June 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/23/british-pound-given-boost-by-projected-remain-win-in-eu-referendum, consulted 8 July 2025.
Mark Carney, “Statement from the Governor of the Bank of England following the EU Referendum Result”, Bank of England, 24 June 2016, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2016/june/statement-from-the-governor-of-the-boe-following-the-eu-referendum-result, consulted 8 July 2025.
James Scott, Hussein Kassim and Thomas Warren, “From Big Bang to Brexit: The City of London and the Discursive Power of Finance”, Political Studies, 70:3, February 2021, pp. 719-738.
Peter S. Goodman, “As Britain confronts ‘Brexit’, a Canadian Takes Center Stage: Mark Carney”, New York Times, 15 September 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/business/international/bank-of-england-brexit-carney.html, consulted 8 July 2025.
House of Commons Treasury Committee, “Oral Evidence: Bank of England Inflation Report”, HC 61, 24 May 2016, Q48 & Q56, https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/5701/pdf/, consulted 8 July 2025.
Ibid, Q114.
House of Commons Treasury Committee, “Oral evidence: The economic and Financial Costs and Benefits of UK Membership of the EU”, HC499, 8 March 2016, Questions Q1008 & Q1068, https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/5464/pdf/, consulted 8 July 2025.
Faisal Islam, “The Inside Story of the Mini-Budget Disaster”, BBC, 25 September 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66897881, consulted 8 July 2025.
Ibid.
House of Commons Treasury Committee, “Oral evidence: Autumn 2022 Fiscal Events, HC 740”, 19 October 2022, Q80-81, https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/11373/pdf/, consulted 8 July 2025. In her memoir, Liz Truss also accuses the Governor, despite being politically neutral, of blocking Kwarteng’s preferred candidate to take over as permanent secretary at the Treasury (George Parker, “Liz Truss Considered Sacking Andrew Bailey as BoE Governor after Mini-Budget”, Financial Times, 16 April 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/cf64f93d-91da-4ff6-9c58-c0c3ad404d99, consulted 8 July 2025).
House of Commons Treasury Committee, “Oral evidence: Bank of England Monetary Policy Reports”, HC 143, 16 November 2022, https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/11551/default/, consulted 8 July 2025.
Greg Heffer, “MPs gather for Glitzy Westminster Awards Bash as Rishi Sunak Thanks 'the UK bond markets' As He Scoops 'Comeback of the Year' Gong”, Mail Online, 24 November 2022, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11465269/Rishi-Sunak-thanks-UK-bond-markets-scoops-comeback-year-MPs-awards-bash.html, consulted 8 July 2025.
Martin B. Carstensen and Vivien A. Schmidt, “Power and Changing Modes of Governance in the Euro Crisis”, Governance, 31:4, October 2017, p. 613.
Montagu Norman was the Bank of England’s longest serving Governor (1920-1944): his motto was “never explain, never apologise”.
Ed Conway, “Bank of England Head Andrew Bailey Denies Role in Liz Truss's Downfall”, Sky News, 14 November 2022, https://news.sky.com/story/bank-of-england-head-andrew-bailey-denies-role-in-liz-trusss-downfall-12747640, consulted 8 July 2025.
Keneth Rogoff, “The Optimal Degree of Commitment to an Intermediate Monetary Target”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 100:4, November 1985, pp. 1169-1189.
Chris Clarke and Adrienne Roberts, “Mark Carney and the Gendered Political Economy of British Central Banking”, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 18:1, 2016, p. 50.
Christopher Adolph, Bankers, Bureaucrats and Central Bank Politics: The Myth of Neutrality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Will Dunn, “Why the Bank of England Didn’t Rescue Rishi Sunak”, New Statesman, 20 June 2024, https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2024/06/why-the-bank-of-england-didnt-rescue-rishi-sunak, consulted 8 July 2025.
QE was first experimented in Japan in 2001, and then in the US in 2009, with mixed results.
Wealth distribution in the UK is already highly skewed: “around 50 per cent of total wealth is held by the highest wealth decile: a rise in asset prices directly benefits those already holding those assets”, Joseph E. Gagnon et al., “Quantitative (Displ)easing? Does QE work and should it be used next time?”, Resolution Foundation, September 2019, p. 9.
Ibid.
Will Dunn, “The QE theory of Everything”, New Statesman, 1-7 March 2024, p. 22.
Bank of England’s Independent Evaluation Office, IEO evaluation of the Bank of England’s Approach to Quantitative Easing, 13 January 2021, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/independent-evaluation-office/ieo-report-january-2021/ieo-evaluation-of-the-bank-of-englands-approach-to-quantitative-easing, consulted 8 July 2025.
HMT Open letters between the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/inflationary-targets, consulted 8 July 2025.
“Active monetary policy is a key part of our economic plan”, George Osborne, The Chancellor’s Annual Mansion House Speech, HM Treasury, 19 June 2013, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-by-chancellor-of-the-exchequer-rt-hon-george-osborne-mp-mansion-house-2013, consulted 8 July 2025.
Bank of England, IEO evaluation of the Bank of England’s Approach to Quantitative Easing, 13 January 2021, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/independent-evaluation-office/ieo-report-january-2021/ieo-evaluation-of-the-bank-of-englands-approach-to-quantitative-easing, consulted 8 July 2025.
Ibid.
House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, 1st Report of Session 2021-2022, “Quantitative Easing: A Dangerous Addiction?”, 16 July 2021, https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/6725/documents/71894/default/, consulted 8 July 2025.
This is because any increase in interest rates might jeopardise the government’s spending plans post-QE and therefore the Bank might come under pressure not to increase interest rates.
Harry Lambert, “Mervyn King: ‘The Bank of England made a terrible mistake’ – The former Governor of the Bank on what Kwasi Kwarteng got wrong and how quantitative easing helped fuel the inflation crisis”, New Statesman, 12 October 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2022/10/mervyn-king-the-bank-of-england-made-a-terrible-mistake, consulted 8 July 2025.
The available data extends only through January 2019, thus excluding the fifth round of QE (Bank of England’s Independent Evaluation Office, IEO Evaluation of the Bank of England’s Approach to Quantitative Easing, 13 January 2021, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/independent-evaluation-office/ieo-report-january-2021/ieo-evaluation-of-the-bank-of-englands-approach-to-quantitative-easing, consulted 8 July 2025.
George Parker, “Mark Carney Endorses Labour’s Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves”, Financial Times, 9 October 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/13aeb762-5636-4423-b964-9128e2d9137d, consulted 8 July 2025.
Andrew Bailey, “Growth”, Speech given at the Mansion House Financial and Professional Services Dinner, 14 November 2024, https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2024/november/andrew-bailey-speech-at-the-annual-financial-and-professional-services-dinner, consulted 8 July 2025.
The Economist, “America’s Trust in Its Institutions Has Collapsed”, 17 August 2024, https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/04/17/americas-trust-in-its-institutions-has-collapsed, consulted 8 July 2025.
Despite the narrow statutory remit set to the UK central bank, these Bank officials have been seen and heard, post-GFC, to raise progressive issues ranging from inequality to climate change. “Redrawing the boundaries of institutional fields” around the social sphere as an area of consensus-forming which stands in contrast to the excesses of both market and partisan politics, these “ boundary-walking organic intellectuals” of global capitalism have been attempting to promote a “globalisation that works for all” (Adam Blanden, “‘A sense of the Systemic’: The Bank of England and the language of inclusive capitalism”, Review of International Political Economy, 31:5, 4 April 2024, pp. 1520-1543.
In discursive institutionalism, this refers to ideas that underlie policies and programmes, which are often unarticulated as background knowledge and therefore rarely contested.
Georgina Cutler, “Britons ‘Need to Accept’ Being Poorer Says Bank of England Economist on £190k Salary”, GB News, 26 April 2023, https://www.gbnews.com/money/bank-of-england-accept-being-poor-huw-pill, consulted 8 July 2025.
Adam Blanden, “‘A sense of the systemic’”, op.cit., p. 1538.
Benjamin Braun, “Central Planning for Public Purpose”, in Didier Fassin and Marion Fourcade (eds) Pandemic Exposures: Economy and Society in the Time of Coronavirus (Chicago, HAU Books, 2021), pp. 105-121.
Nelson Phillips, Thomas B. Lawrence and Cynthia Hardy, “Discourse and Institutions”, Academy of Management Review, 29:4, 2004, p. 638.
Indeed the coming to office of President Trump and Prime Minister Carney reflect a new political reality which forms part of the Bank’s own challenges in ensuring UK financial stability within the global economy.
Hyman P. Minsky, “The Financial Instability Hypothesis: A Restatement”, 1978, Hyman P. Minsky Archive, Paper 180, https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/hm_archive/180, consulted 8 July 2025.
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